August Workshop: Harnessing Delight w/ Marie Conlan
Delight! Let’s suspend briefly our judgement or suspicion, our terror or paralysis, and engage the Beast of Delight. Let’s track it down, devour it, and let it nourish us. When we catch its glimmer in the depths of darkness, it presents to us a gift: a chance to engage with our experience of the fleeting, unfolding, juicy present moment. Ah, here lies our Self! Let’s Create! Here! Now!
“Delight” may or may not conjure up images of cheeseball montages/ frolicking in sunny meadows/ rainbows/ butterflies/ a paltry something without much value, but in its essence, delight is a powerful illumination into what activates our creative selves. Delight is the moment when something we experience mirrors our truth back to us. It is the feeling that something has witnessed, seen, validated, understood, and connected with an essential part of you. When we recognize what delights us, we activate what bears witness to us.
Have you ever been eyeball deep in rage and beaten the life out of a pile of rocks while listening to Pantera? Delightful! Have you ever slung a nasty (but justified!) comment so ripe with perfection at someone so hard their jaw unhinged? Delightful! Ever eaten a perfect blackberry? Ever taken a nap after a day in the sun? Ever been driving in the rain and your favorite sad song that just gets you in this moment starts playing and the way you’re singing along and holding your cheeks shit they should just ask you to remake the music video? Ever taken a really really deep breath after forgetting you have lungs all day? Ever stared at an abstract painting of yellow shapes that understood the way your relationship to your mother has unfolded throughout the years of your life? Ever hand plucked all the marshmallows from off-brand lucky charms and stuck them on a McDonalds ice cream cone? Ever smelled a lilac? Delight, delight, delight!
When we trust ourselves to follow what entrances us, we will lead ourselves to glistening pieces of our authentic Self. This is a vast, immense, awe-some, infinite, and necessary space to create from. Let’s play there. Come, lets poke the Beast.
Goals, Hopes & Dreams, Possible Outcomes:
In this workshop, we will use contemplative practices to notice, cultivate, and nourish our felt sense about what brings us delight, and create from within this space. We will allow, demand, build, and hold space to revel in this delight. We will suspend judgement & suspicion of its value and worth, and play in its presence. We will allow creative play to replace production as the end goal of our creative process. We will cultivate the courage to sacrifice ‘good’ & ‘sensical’ & ‘prolific’ for ‘authentic.’ We may make messy, unfinished, ugly art in this necessary pursuit. We will leave with rituals & tools to bring us back into the space of delight when we think the Beast has left us in the night.
Materials:
Pen & paper, scissors, and access to computer/Slack/& Google Drive, and any mediums you would like to create with: cameras, paints, textiles, needlework, music, and videos to name just a few!
Marie Conlan is an artist living and writing in Colorado, where she is a co-founder of Nocturne Lucid Writing Workshops & co-collaborator with the .OFF collective. Her first book Say Mother Say Hand was released through Half Mystic Press in 2020. She was named a finalist for the Noemi Press Book Award in 2017 and 2018, a finalist for the Airlie Press Prize in 2018, and a finalist for Metatron's 2018 Rising Authors Prize.
Logistics:
- Workshops consist of one video per week for each week in the month. Videos are 45-60 minutes long, and are shared on a private YouTube account.
- Class discussions are held via Slack.
- All readings, creative prompts, and shared artwork will be exchanged via a private Google Drive folder.
- All workshops are designed for you. Dedicate as much or as little time to the workshop per week as you'd like.
- This workshop is taught in English, but collective.aporia offers subtitles for the workshop videos in over 60 languages. If you have questions about language accommodations, please feel free to email us at [email protected].
[Image Credit: Markus Bürkle]
